Advices and Forums

kiuchitatsuro:

今朝、マンションのバザーを覗きに行ったら、森英二郎さんの本物版画が額付き１００円で売られていたので救ってきました。このような素晴らしい作品が１００円で手に入ったことは非常に幸運であると思うのですが、少し悲しい気もしますね。自分の絵もこのようにしてバザーなどで売られてどこかへ流れ、そのうち失われてしまったりしているのかもしれません。

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Why would a pine tree be dangerous? Jonesy demonstrates the dangers of pine cones.

Today, I woke up to a super-terrific surprise!	The evil tree near my house was getting trimmed!
It’s really tall and so’s that truck!	I’m watching the city tree crew take down the neighbor's gigantic pine tree. Yikes. That's really high!

You’re probably wondering why a dog would have a feud with a tree. But if a tree had it out for you, I’m sure you’d feel like me.  Yeah, it looks pretty innocent, but it’s a pine tree.

So it has these, which can be unhealthy to dogs who want to live.	One minute you’re standing in the driveway, while you enjoy the scenery.
But at any second, Blam! A young, but not innocent, pinecone could fall from 20-80 feet or more and land on your head. In fact, one landed just a foot from me the other day. Here I am re-enacting the near consequences. I could have been knocked unconscious!	Ok. I am getting instructions that I need to act more stunned. So here’s my unconscious look.  Does this pose make me look fat? The immature pinecones weigh more than a baseball, especially in winter when they are nutrient dense. They get lighter as the season progresses and then they open up to their more familiar seed dispersing shape. Note: I always thought it was odd that the humans sprinted across that area of the driveway. They knew about the tree and the windshield-breaking pinecones, but they failed to tell me!

 

You are probably wondering how I can watch the tree safely come down without getting smooshed by a branch? A highly trained crew is taking it down bit by bit.

They have a pulley system for lowering the branches.

Here’s the cutting and tying up close.
The crew started at 8:00 am and it's now 5 hours later.	Here are the branches turning into wood chips.
Yahoo. I’ve conquered the tree! Only a mere totem pole is left. The crew took this pole down in just a couple of hours and now there’s just a tree base!

 

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Hello everybody,

New pictures of Trigger :





After his bath laying on the balcony :








Thank you for your time and good day to you all.
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Just Released on Fido Loves It’s Not Yappy Hour, It’s Yappier Hour at The Liberty Hotel

The very pet friendly Liberty Hotel sets up an outside bar in their enclosed courtyard for dogs and their owners. Drinks and appetizers were served among a unique mix of romping pooches and Bostonians. As I have heard great things about The Liberty from others regarding the quality of cocktail and conversation, I had high expectations already. I was, however, unsure how Moose our Pointer would fit in.

Keep reading It’s Not Yappy Hour, It’s Yappier Hour at The Liberty Hotel at Fido Loves

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I breathed a big sigh of relief on the evening of Saturday, May 5. The 138th running of the Kentucky Derby was over and the equine ambulance didn’t have to pick up any passengers, no screens were erected to shield the viewing public from tragedy, and everyone made it back to the barn safely.
 

Oh yeah, and the race … it was a good one. Lots of talented horses, a fast start and early fractions, and then the exciting come from behind win by I’ll Have Another (his name a reference to cookies, not booze, his connections claim). The winning jockey, a newcomer named Mario Gutierrez, cried with joy in his post-race interviews. It was a feel-good moment.

Unfortunately, I just don’t enjoy horse racing like I used to. In the past, I harbored dreams of having my own little breeding operation where I could watch “my” babies grow up and then play a role in their inevitable triumphs on the track. Then two thoughts brought me back to earth: 1) Unless I was willing to live in a dump and generally be more miserly than I am already, I was never going to have the cash reserves necessary for this endeavor (these days any extra money we have goes into my daughter’s college fund, where it will undoubtedly be put to much better use), and 2) I don’t think I could stand losing one of my horses to an injury sustained during a race that I entered it in.

My primary feeling when I catch the rare race on TV these days is trepidation. The horses are still spellbinding in their beauty and athleticism, but my joy in watching them run has been tempered with worry for their well-being. A study that was published in 2011 showed that thoroughbreds and quarter horses racing at three Midwestern racetracks sustained catastrophic musculoskeletal injuries (i.e., broke down and had to be euthanized) at a rate of 1.46 per 1,000 starts. To put it another way, if a typical race day included ten races with ten starters each, at each of these three tracks, 1.46 horses would die from musculoskeletal injuries sustained during racing alone every 3.3 days.

Granted, the superstars that run on the first Saturday in May have led the good life during their three short years of existence, but all that could change with even a non life-threatening injury or a string of losses. I can’t watch even the most pampered of thoroughbreds without thinking about all the horses that run on the smaller tracks around the country and the hard lives they lead and the uncertain futures that await them.

So, I’ll probably continue to catch the occasional big race on TV when my schedule permits, but as for taking a more active role in horse racing — either as a bettor or a potential breeder/owner — I’ll have to pass for now. Racing is making some strides in advancing the welfare of their equine athletes (synthetic tracks, charities and sanctuaries dedicated to retired racers, etc.), but they still have a long way to go.
 
 

Dr. Jennifer Coates
 
 
Image: Cheryl Ann Quigley / via Shutterstock
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To head off any questions - no, we're not expecting. BUT a few of my friends are, and many of my clients are. I recently ran a 1 hour seminar at Durty Harry's in Charlestown, and figured I could help more people by writing about it. Plus, it was fun getting photos from all who submitted! We're due in August, 2012 Olivia and "Finn" contemplate the rainy day. (Photo taken by Jennifer Brown
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Recently, as I’m sure many of you are aware, the USDA confirmed a case of mad cow disease in a dairy cow in central California. This animal tested positive in a rendering facility, which is a plant where food animals of “lesser quality” are ground for things other than human consumption - like pet food, for example. This means, and the AVMA (American Veterinary Medical Association) has confirmed it, that no part of this animal with mad cow disease entered the human food chain. Whew.
 

But, whenever this weird disease rears its head in this country (which it has three other times — 2003, 2005 and 2006), I am reminded of how fascinating and terrifying this disease is. Let’s discuss about mad cow disease.

Firstly, the politically correct term for mad cow disease is bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). Let’s try to be sensitive to all those cows out there that truly are mad, shall we? The name BSE describes perfectly what this disease does: causes a disease of the brain (encephalopathy), whereby it has the appearance of a sponge (spongiform).

Naturally, the next question is how the heck does a brain turn into a sponge? Here’s where we start to get creeped out. The infectious agent of BSE is a unique little thing called a prion (rhymes with ion). Prions are proteins — yes, mere proteins.

I cannot repeat this enough, not only because it blows my mind but because people just don’t seem to understand this: The cause of BSE is not a virus or bacteria or any other "live" and self-replicating agent.

Prions are proteins that are folded incorrectly. Let’s take one step back here for a second and meander on a side trip to biochemistry (I know, try not to get too excited). Proteins are large molecules made of a chain of amino acids. This chain folds into delicate shapes to form the final structure of the protein. Prions, for reasons yet unknown, are proteins that have folded incorrectly. Now, what’s the big deal about a stinking rogue protein not folding correctly, you ask? Well, it wouldn’t be a big deal except for the fact that any other protein that touches this prion then becomes incorrectly folded itself, thus "transmitting" this folding problem throughout the nervous system. Oh, and it just so happens that these incorrectly folded proteins cause holes in the tissue. Which is where the term spongiform comes in.

So, how does mad cow disease pass from cow to cow if it is in the brain? This requires a look at the "old way" of feeding animals. Animals that are raised for meat require lots of protein in their diet to build muscle — and build it fast. Cheap forms of protein come from the slaughter by-products of other animals, such as blood and bone meal. Well, when ground up bone meal containing bits and pieces of brain tissue were fed back to cattle, you’ve got a convenient way to pass along prions.

Most people remember, at least from a cursory perspective, the mad cow disease outbreak in the U.K. back in the 1980s and 1990s, where people were eating beef from animals that had this condition, which was then linked to a similar neurologic disease in humans, called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD). In 1997, the U.S. adopted a feed ban that prevented the feeding of cattle bone meal and other potentially BSE contaminated parts to other cattle. There is also a ban on the slaughter of "downer" cows — cows that can’t stand or walk.

I myself haven’t encountered any suspect cases of BSE, and unless there’s a horrible outbreak in the U.S., I don’t think I ever will for the following reasons:
 
1. BSE often takes a long time to develop clinical signs (i.e., mad cow disease symptoms).  Many cattle are slaughtered way before they are old enough to show signs. I rarely deal with cattle much over seven years of age. The oldest cow I’ve dealt with so far has been a 14-year-old Angus named Annie, and she’s really more of a pet.
 
2. Most neurologic bovine cases I see involve bacterial infections, thiamine or calcium deficiency, or (rarely) rabies. Although when you think about it, rabies is far easier to catch and much more prevalent than BSE. Maybe I just won’t think about that.
 
This little blog has actually only touched the surface about mad cow disease. I didn’t get to talk about how other species like mink, sheep, and even cats have their own types of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. Perhaps another time? You bring the coffee and I’ll bring the donut holes (because we’re talking about holes in the brain — get it?).
 
 

Dr. Anna O’Brien
 
 
Image: NLshop & antoshkaforever / via Shutterstock
 
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The last few weeks have left millions of dogs feeling the way I’d feel with my parents at a dinner party where other parents were talking about their kids getting ready to attend medical or law school, after they finish competing in the Olympics or return from the junior astronaut program at Cape Canaveral. The social media outlets have been rife with stories of dogs; dogs pulling unconscious owners off of train tracks, getting their families out of burning houses, grieving at gravesides, raising litters of kittens or piglets or the odd squirrel, guiding blind dogs, even winning the grand prize in Britains Got Talent show. How the heck is a pet dog suppose to live up to that?

The complete irony is that while dogs are out there being heroes, performers, parents, and damn good friends, the range and sophistication of their abilities remains unrealized by many of us, not least of all by the very people who should know better; dog trainers, or as some label themselves, rehabilitators or psychologists. When dogs behave in ways we approve of we ascribe them with emotions and behaviors as varied and rich as our own. They are selfless, loving, brave and intelligent. Should they behave in ways we do not approve of they are……dominant. Growl at a person to keep them away-dominant. Jump up on someone in greeting-dominant. Rush out the door to explore the latest scents-dominant. Pull on the leash because the world beckons-dominant. It would be funny, except that it isn’t.

When trainers and owners see dogs’ behavior through a single lens they not only do a huge disservice to the dog, it’s an insult to the animals who will sit for years at a train station waiting for their never-to-return owner to step off the car. If you’ve ever been the victim of a misinterpretation of your behavior and intentions you know how upsetting it can be. It’s a popular theme of many movies, the protagonist, accused and prosecuted for a crime they did not commit spends the next hour and a half risking their life to prove their innocence. As a kid my habit of leaving dirty dishes in the sink was interpreted as a way to ‘upset my mother’. Though a therapist might disagree, my real issues were laziness and immaturity. The biggest impact of the mislabeling of my lack of dishwashing behavior was that my parents took it personally, and it was upsetting to them on a whole different level than it might have otherwise been.

Does the desire to be dominant exist in dogs? It does, to a much lesser degree than currently being touted, but the desire to cooperate, avoid conflict, play and have a friend, also exist. Misinterpreting and labeling a dog’s behavior as ‘dominant’ often causes them be treated in ways that range from merely inappropriate to downright cruel. This can lead to a further degradation in their behavior and unfortunately in the scripts of many dogs’ lives there is no last minute reprieve from the governor.

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Welcome to our weekly photo challenge … where we post a pet travel picture and you guess the dog friendly destination!

Last Week’s Winner

Thanks to everyone who played, and congratulations to Jessica W. of Seattle, WA – she won last week’s challenge for correctly identifying this location as Mount Baker near Bellingham, WA. We hope you enjoy your “Travels with Ty & Buster” calendar, Jessica!

This Week’s Photo Challenge

Now it’s your turn to win. If you know where the photo below was taken, submit your answer in the entry form. If you’re stumped try checking some of our older posts – there’s a good chance the photo appeared previously on the blog.

For the winner …

Each week we randomly select one winner from the correct entries to receive a “Travels with Ty & Buster” 18-month wall calendar.

And the photo is …

Do you know where this photo was taken?

Contest Entry

The Fine Print

This week’s contest closes on Wednesday, May 23rd at 11:59 pm EST. This contest is open to US and Canadian residents over the age of 18, except were prohibited. All correct submissions will be assigned a number and the winner will be selected using www.randomizer.org. Winners will be notified by email, announced on our Facebook page, and mentioned in next week’s Friday Photo Challenge. The decision of the judges is final. The winner has 3 days to claim the prize. If the prize is not claimed by the winner within 3 days, an alternate winner will be chosen from the pool of correct entries. The winner of the prize is responsible for any and all applicable taxes on the prize. Employees and relatives of GoPetFriendly.com are not eligible to win.

Planning a pet friendly trip of your own? We’ll make it easy:
Pet Friendly Hotels | Pet Friendly Destinations | Pet Friendly Activities

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A million years ago, my first Border Collie Drift lept up and nipped a man’s nose at the Wisconsin State Fair. Even though the man was clearly not injured, with virtually not even a red spot on his nose, I was shook up and appalled. He was furious. “Your dog attacked me!”

Well, he did. Just because the man wasn’t injured didn’t mean he didn’t feel attacked. And it didn’t mean that I didn’t feel horrible. Drift and I were about to perform in front of huge crowd by doing a sheep herding demo, and found ourselves jammed into a crowd against the building wall. The gentlemen in question charged up to Drift, grabbed his face in his hands, and yes, you guessed it, bent down to kiss Drift on the nose. It was the same exact context in which newscaster Kyle Dyer was bitten by a Dogo a few months ago. In some ways, everything was different: Kyle was badly injured and it was recorded on video tape for all the world to see. And in one way, everything was the same: A stranger holds a dog’s head in his/her hands and looms over to kiss a dog on the nose. Just like David Letterman was bitten on camera years ago. Just like how many people are bitten every year?

I find myself thinking of this before the beginning of Dog Bite Prevention Week, which runs from May 20 to May 26. It’s an important topic and I’m in complete support of efforts to raise awareness and prevent dog bites. The figures bandied about are that there are almost 5 million dog bites every year in the US (but see Dogs Bite but Balloons and Slippers are More Dangerous…). Given that that figure appears to include events in which there was no injury whatsoever, the number is undoubtedly on the high side, but no matter how many there are, we all should be working to decrease them.

There is lots of good, standard information out there about preventing dog bites. The AVMA has a good website on bite prevention, as does the ASPCA and HSUS. There is lots of good advice on all these sites, especially related to keeping children from being bitten (the most common recipient of a dog bite appears to be a child from the ages of 5 to 9). However, much of it is general: pick a good puppy, train your dog, have a fenced yard, teach children to ask first, etc.

This is all good information, but we all know that no list is enough to prevent many of the bites that occur. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep up our efforts. Here’s my list, which builds on the standard advice and adds my own observations and experience, I’m counting on you to add to it:

1. Leashes Aren’t Muzzles. (Neither are muzzles for that matter.) In other words, keeping your dog on a leash won’t prevent him from biting someone. Sometimes leashes can precipitate bites if a dog is nervous and feels trapped. I’ve been overwhelmed by clients who believed that if their dog was attached by a leash, or even if they were close to their dog, that they could prevent a bite. We can prevent lots of bites from happening, but not always with leashes and proximity. When people miss signals of discomfort or tension in their dogs, they end up trying to stop a bite after it has begun. Stopping a dog in mid-air, within the micro-second required, to observe, evaluate and respond is far beyond the skill level of most people. People rarely say or think “I”m being bitten.” By the time you figure out what’s happened, it’s over.  Far better to understand both context and behavior to prevent a bite long before your dog even thinks about it. And my comment about muzzles? Dogs can still hurt people, even with a muzzle on. There are lots of ways to lower the risk, but there’s no magic out there. Based on all this, you can predict my next point:

2. Learn to Read Dogs, and Teach Others What You Know. Recall Michele Wan’s research that showed the dog owning public is not very good at reading signs of negative emotions in dogs (fear, anxiety, etc.). Thus, we all need to do what we can to help educate everyone around us. It’s not helpful for us to pull our hair and roll our eyes about how bad people are at reading dogs, and how often they behave in ways that simply beg a dog to bite them. That just makes us right, and being right gets us one thing and one thing only: Being Right. That’s not going to decrease the number of dog bites out there, so we need to use our knowledge to help others. If you’re a trainer, get yourself on television, give out handouts, refer people to materials and websites that will help them translate dog. There are tons of them. Needless to say I have my own at my website, (and FYI, I have a new DVD coming out this coming Monday titled “Lost in Translation,” a day-long seminar on how dogs use sight, sound and smell to communicate) and there are many other great books and DVDs available through Dogwise and Tawzer Videos.

3. Understand Context: This contains a vast range of issues, from what tends to scare dogs in general (strangers grabbing their heads and trying to kiss their noses, surely a problem we can all understand–want a strange man to grab your head and smash his face into your own?), what scares each dog as an individual, and how the context itself can add risk. My Border Collie Drift was trapped and overwhelmed, as was the Dogo that bit Ms. Dyer. I’ve had numerous clients whose dogs bit someone after a long, exhausting day. I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard about dogs who were “just wonderful” with all the children at the picnic all afternoon and evening long until … In hind sight the owner’s tell me “They should have known how tired their dog was…”. Yes, they should have, but we need to help spread the word that even good dogs can get grumpy too when they are exhausted. And when they are overwhelmed. Or scared. Or a tad tweaked about life at the moment.

4. Practice Interventions and Use Them When Necessary. This is where I went wrong all those years ago. If I was in that same situation now I would have never have allowed that man get that close to Drift. I would have moved between him and Drift before he could have grabbed Drift’s face and leaned down to kiss him. Body Blocks work really, really well on people, and can be used to avoid a great many risky situations.

Just a few days ago I was at a pet store that allows dogs and saw an owner use one perfectly. He had an adult Rottie, a lovely, happy-faced dog, who was approached by a squiggly, squirmy Golden Retriever puppy. The puppies’ owner let her dog dash toward the Rottie until they sniffed nose to nose. We were in tight quarters at the check out line. The Rottie had no where to back up into, and the enthusiastic puppy was about to jump onto his head. Wisely, the owner stepped quickly between the dogs, moved toward the puppy a step or two to move him away and then turned and smooched to his dog to follow him.

I turned to the pup’s owner, who had appeared surprised at what had happened and seemed a little bit put out. I thought perhaps I could use this as a teaching moment, and explained “I think the Rottie might have been a tad bit uncomfortable with your pup.” I hope she understood my point, but I can’t say, because the Rottie’s other owner turned to me and said, defensively, “He is a LOVELY dog, he is NOT aggressive.” Ah, and I thought he was a lovely dog myself, but I also noted that owner number one was wise enough to know that any trouble might react to a rude pup in that context, and quick as a wink did a body block. Huzzah! and Yeah! for him I say. Even lovely dogs have contexts in which they are uncomfortable, and more power to us when we know what they are.

5. The World’s Most Dangerous Words Are “I Think It’ll Be Okay.” I asked a salesman once if the hardware I was about to buy would stay attached to a wall if a 150 pound dog lunged against it with all his power. “I think so,” the guy said. This is when red flags should fly and noises generated by the security systems of nuclear power plants should start pounding into your ears. “Think it’s okay” is just not good enough when you are talking about a potential dog bite. I tell clients whose dogs are at risk of biting that we first, before talking about treatment, need to create the kind of risk management system included in submarines and power plants. If your not sure if your dog is 100% stable in a situation and you find yourself saying “I think it’ll be okay” without a careful and thoughtful risk analysis, I want you to hear AH OOOGA, AH OOOGA blasting in your ear. You want to hear “I KNOW it will be okay,” or given that life is never 100% predictable, “The probability of my dog hurting or scaring someone is less than .01 of one percent, and I’m willing to take that risk.” Whatever you decide, it should be very thoughtful, based on a lot of knowledge and be very, very conservative. Bites can be horrible for everyone, including the dog, and once they happen you’re in a entirely different context, and it’s not a good one.

And you? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. I expect they will be both thoughtful and thought provoking, as usual.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Spring sweet spring. Well, sort of. Summer, sweet summer? It’s in the low 80′s, sunny and warm and already I’m worrying a bit about when it will rain next. It’s been awhile.

But 8 of the 9 lambs are thriving, filling out with muscles and frolicking in the dappled shade of the woods. Spot’s twin ram lamb, who I’ve been supplementing with goat’s milk (mom’s udder is only giving milk from one side), was a voracious vacuum at first when given a bottle, but now he’s fussy and hesitant and only takes a few sips and then stops. This started after he was vaccinated and banded (and thus he lost trust in me), but the other bottle lamb, one of triplets, needed only a day to get over it. Spot’s boy, however, has remained hesitant and cautious.

His tiny twin sister, who I was most concerned about originally, continues to remind me that size doesn’t matter. She’s the pushy one. And although she refuses to take milk from a bottle (“Ugh, ugh!” she indicates by curling her lip and turning away), she’s filling out like a tick and has begun mounting the two ram lambs every time they start to drink out of the bottle. I’m speculating that with only one teat working, she’s dominating it and her brother is losing out. He doesn’t look bad, he’s just not gaining like the others, so I’ll keep working on getting him more milk. I tried a self feeder, which has been successful in the past, but I started late and because they all get milk from their momma’s they had little interest. I’ll keep you posted, we’re going to look at him more carefully this weekend for any physical or medical problems.

Willie and I just moved the entire flock up the hill to the orchard pasture so that my handy neighbor could bring in his bobcat and clear out the barn pen. May I be forgiven for saying that Willie’s work on the sheep was paw perfect? And where was the video camera when I needed?

As you can see, right now at the farm it’s all about lambs and flowers and working Willie and weeding weeding weeding.  And, oh yeah, rhubarb & strawberry pie. Did I mention weeding?

Here’s the only bloom on the new Tree Peony we planted last year. I almost didn’t include the photograph because the focus isn’t crisp, but decided to anyway because it is still lovely in a kind of smear-petroleum-jelly-on-the-lens-for-the-aging-actress kind of way.

 

And here’s the Iris in front of the please-paint-me-this-summer porch. You can see Willie boy in the background, watching the sheep in behind the electric fence in the front yard:

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Well we have been going back and forth to the vet with Kaia. It's not looking good. Our vet thinks he has Lumbo Sacral Instability. What that is, is compression of the spine. It's pinching off the nervers in the spinal colum. I am stil doing some research on this to learn more and see what treament ...
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The theory goes like this. It doesn’t matter if each individual meal we feed ourselves or our pets is balanced … because overtime, with enough variety, it’ll all balance out. I know I’ve said this to myself, especially if ice cream is on the menu for dinner.

I’ve heard the idea used to explain / justify things like:

• Supplementing a commercial pet food with “people food” (which I do)
• Rotating through a variety of commercial pet foods (which our pet food shopping habits survey shows 45% of our readers do)
• Making a variety of homemade pet foods (and not worrying too much about day-to-day nutritional balance)

Thanks to a press pass at the recent American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine Forum, I got to attend some pet nutrition seminars given by board-certified veterinary nutritionists. I wrote a bit about one session on homemade pet diets earlier (on my own blog), but I wanted to give more time and space to one concept in particular:

This idea of nutritional balance over time.

Jennifer Larsen, DVM, a board-certified veterinary nutritionist at University of California-Davis, poked a few wholes in the idea during her seminar. After reading through my notes from the event, I sent her some follow-up questions via email to find out more.

When Larsen chooses or creates a pet diet for a veterinary teaching hospital client, she explains, “First, my perspective is that the primary goal of the nutritional management of any case is to provide adequate amounts of energy as well as all the required nutrients. Secondly, specific nutritional modifications are considered if needed (like fat restriction, limitations in potassium or phosphorus, etc). Then, I consider ingredients that work within these parameters (as well as withing criteria from the patient and client) and go from there. This is the same process whether I ultimately meet my goals using a commercial diet (over the counter or prescription), a parenteral formulation [via IV], a liquid elemental enteral product [via feeding tube], or a home-cooked diet.”

Other considerations include:

• The pet’s nutrient requirements compared to a “normal” pet population
• How a pet’s energy intake affects micronutrient requirements
• The bioavailability of those micronutrients in specific diets or ingredients
• What digestibility values determine nutrient content of the diet

Calling nutrition both a quantitative and a qualitative science, Larsen sums up her concerns about “nutritional balance over time,” like this: “I have heard the ‘balance over time’ concept as a means to promote dietary variety and achieve nutrient balance, and specifics on how this is achieved are never provided.”

Questions to Ask, Answers You Need: Nutritional Balance Over Time

Which version of nutrient requirements will you use? There are several … National Research Council, Association of American Feed Control Officials … etc.

How exactly will you balance out the various deficiencies? For example, if the diet is deficient for your pet’s needs (in something like zinc) and you feed the diet for two weeks, then do you on day 14 give a supplement that has 14 x the daily requirement? Or, do you give various levels of supplements over many days with the idea that the total amount will average out to the daily requirement?

Nutritional Balance Over Time: Concerns [emphasis mine]

“My fear,” says Larsen, “is that it is a convenient way to justify the approach of feeding casually and not worrying about such things as micronutrient requirements. It seems to me that this practice could set us up for multiple chronic marginal deficiency syndromes, such that over clinical signs of such would show up after a long period of time, if ever (given the short life spans of our pets). Also, this brings up the concern of suboptimal performance that may only be manifested in certain parameters of health and well-being that we don’t typically measure. I do see overt deficiency and toxicity cases. But, what about the many potential others that have more vague signs? The deficiency signs for multiple nutrients include lethargy and inappetence.”

Ingredient variables include things like cooking method (which can alter nutrient levels). Then, there is the common mistake of substituting volume measurements for weight ones. And, even a seemingly well-balanced homemade pet food that looks good for protein, carbs, and fats … can still be deficient in micronutrients (there are 40 of them). So, even if you use a decent recipe and merely swap out protein or carb sources once in a while, a fundamentally deficient recipe is still fundamentally deficient.

Plus, there is a tendency for “recipe drift,” where:

• Measurements get less precise over time
• Ingredients get substituted
• Feeding amounts shift (up or down)
  

Nutritional Balance Over Time: The Human Comparison

Larsen calls the human analogy (that we don’t feed ourselves particularly well and we’re mostly OK) a poor one … because there are many forms of rampant malnutrition in industrialized countries, including:

• Obesity
• Vitamin D deficiency
• Vitamin B12 deficiency
• Iron deficiency
• Calcium deficiency

In other words, we don’t do a terrific job on this for ourselves. Even if we work hard at a dietary variety, most people return to the same foods again and again.

Do you believe it’ll all work out? Or are you regularly calculating and re-calculating your pet’s nutritional intake, especially when it comes to micronutrients? If so, I’d love to know more about your methods and strategies.

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We're still reeling and consumed by mourning and mourning-related tasks, but I wanted to post a quick update for those who haven't been following the news on our Champion of My Heart Facebook Fan Page. Starting Friday, May 11, Lilly suffered another relapse. The following symptoms got worse and worse over the weekend:

Lilly’s Neurological Relapse is a post from: Champion of My Heart. To read the entire post, see photos, view any videos, or comment, please click through these links. Thanks so much!

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My husband and I have an arrangement where I walk one of the dogs in the morning while he takes the other running. This works out well for all of us—except when my husband has a week where he’s got to leave for work early every day. Rather than have the dogs do without exercise, I take them both to the park. There, I allow them to run around the dog park (it’s empty at that hour), do their business, and then we go for a 3-4 mile walk/hike around the perimeter and paths of the main park.

I normally have a walking companion, a very tough-looking 65-year-old Columbian man I somehow met while walking many months ago. He walks every day for his health, and we’ve struck up an unlikely friendship. His attitudes reflect his culture and upbringing, and we’ve had some interesting discussions. I’m don’t mind having conversations with people whose ideas are different than mine on a variety of topics, including dogs. I have friends who hold different political views, are of different religions, and hey, some even use training tools I choose not to use (a topic that can amount to a religion for some). This man and I have chatted about ways to train dogs before, but at some point his heavy-handed philosophy just went over the top and I suggested it might be best if we stayed away from dog training as a topic of discussion.

We’ve done just that, and all’s been well—until this morning. There’s a woman we run into sometimes who raises puppies for Guide Dogs. This morning he told me he’d run into her, and saw that her newest puppy was wearing a choke chain. He told her that he thought no one used choke chains anymore (he’d misconstrued my comment that many trainers have moved away from using choke chains in favor of gentler methods). She told him the program uses them because they’re the fastest and best way to train dogs, although they are expected to transition to flat buckle collars when the puppy is older. He was keen to let me know that people do still use choke chains, and that the girl had told him you can train good leash manners without choke chains but instead of taking months, it can take five years. (Can you imagine how hard I was biting my tongue?) I politely let him finish, and then explained that there are ways to train dogs without pain that most certainly do not take five years. Suffice it to say that once this man makes up his mind about something, that’s it, there’s no argument that will sway him—he’s right and that’s that.

Now, when I have Bodhi or Sierra at the park, I don’t require them to walk right by my side (unless there’s a vehicle or dog we need to pass). I figure the park is “their time,” and they’re allowed to walk in front of me as long as they don’t pull. When I have both dogs together, though, they do tend to get into a who-can-pull-further-ahead mindset. I haven’t put effort into working on the problem since they’re almost never walking together. And the truth is, I haven’t done extensive leash work with either of them separately or together, mostly because of chronic back pain. (Somehow when you’re in pain, doing leash work with 50-pound northern breeds is not the thing you most long to do.)

It’s true that my current dogs are not as well trained as my previous dogs have been on leash. So I can see how this man thinks all I need is a choke chain and a few good corrections, and my dogs will be walking nicely by my side. I can’t argue with the fact that this may be partly true—I say partly because it would certainly take a bit more than that—but I do understand the argument. However, as I told him, just because something works doesn’t mean I’d use it on my dogs. I could hit them with a two-by-four and they’d listen, too; doesn’t mean I’d do it. I related that I’d started out training many years ago with choke chains, and then explained my reasons for choosing not to keep using them. After listening to all of this, he said there was an expression in his country; I can’t remember how it went exactly, but it amounted to something like, “A parent gives a child advice but he doesn’t take it, and then years later the child realizes the parent was right.” I asked how that applied to this situation and he said that I’d realize at some point later on he was right. Now, I’m not accustomed to arguing with people in this way because, frankly, it’s not worth my time or energy. I like this man well enough most of the time, and it’s much easier to walk 3-4 miles when you’ve got someone to chat with. So I very politely and calmly told him that he was being condescending and that it wasn’t appreciated. I reminded him that maybe this wasn’t the best topic for us to discuss. By this time, the sun had come up and it had gotten very warm out. He made a joke that maybe it had gotten so hot because of our heated argument, and we laughed, the tension broken.

To many of us, our dogs are our children. No one likes to be told how to raise their kids, human or canine. And no one likes to be told they’re wrong, whether they are or not. I’m willing to discuss pretty much anything with anyone, as long as the tone remains civil and respectful. When it’s not, you’ve hit the boundary of my tolerance. I can’t say I didn’t get a bit annoyed this morning, but I truly believe that if we can discuss things without blowing up at each other, we can learn something. And if we can’t discuss certain topics civilly, well, we can always agree to disagree and move on.

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A long time ago, in one of my earlier books, I wrote about the possible contribution of dietary (and other) allergy to aggressive behavior. I reported that I had recommended to an owner that she should switch her dog’s food to Nature’s Recipe – a 20% protein ration – to help address its aggressive behavior. Weeks later she called me to thank me profoundly for helping her to appreciate the effect of diet on her dog’s behavior. She said the diet I recommended made her dog so much worse it was barely believable. Apparently, this dog’s skin erupted into inflamed and itchy patches and its aggression became much worse. Then she owner made the connection: her dog was allergic to carrots and (apparently) all Nature’s Recipe rations contain carrots. She switched her dog back to a hypo-allergenic diet and its skin and temperament improved again. She gave me the credit for drawing her attention to the impact of diet on behavior.

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